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California Superbloom Is One Town’s #PoppyNightmare

The hillsides dyed orange with poppies may look like something out of a dream, but for the Southern California town of Lake Elsinore, that dream quickly turned into a nightmare.

The town of 66,000 people was inundated with around 50,000 tourists coming to snap pictures of the golden poppies growing in Walker Canyon as part of a superbloom of wildfires caused by an unusually wet winter, BBC News reported. The visitors trampled flowers and caused hours of traffic, The Guardian reported.

"This weekend has been unbearable in Lake Elsinore," the city wrote on its Facebook and Instagram pages, according to The Guardian. "We know it has been miserable and has caused unnecessary hardships for our entire community."

City officials briefly closed access to the canyon Sunday night, but it was opened again Monday morning.

"The City continues to evaluate all possible options to reduce the strain on our community, the freeway, and local roadways. At this time, it is not feasible for us to keep visitors away from #WalkerCanyon," the city said in its post. "We are working on a new plan and new options for the coming weekend and will be sure to share this with our community as soon as possible."

Some have blamed social media for the crowds, as Instagram influencers posted selfies with themselves against a backdrop of flowers.

"We've seen much larger crowds this year because the bloom is bigger than ever," assistant to the Lake Elsinore city manager Nicole Dailey told BBC. "We're getting the crowd numbers Los Angeles gets for large sporting events," Dailey added. "Social media buzz has brought numbers that the city has never gone through before."

The incident began trending as #poppynightmare.

"One of our employees was hit and run by a driver. A rattlesnake bit a visitor. Residents have been screaming at the people directing traffic," Lake Elsinore Mayor Steve Manos said in a Facebook post reported by BBC.

However, while the poppies are causing problems for Lake Elsinore, they are a good sign for California, since the bloom signals that the state is drought-free for the first time in seven years, according to a video by Now This.

The Sierra Nevada snowpack is now 50 percent higher than average and all reservoirs are full, Al Jazeera reported. Just last year, 70 percent of the state was still at risk for water scarcity. However, scientists have said that swings from drought to extreme rainfall will become more common in California with climate change.

The beauty products we put on our skin can have important consequences for our health. Just this March, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned that some Claire's cosmetics had tested positive for asbestos. But the FDA could only issue a warning, not a recall, because current law does not empower the agency to do so.

We know that people power can stop dangerous fossil fuel projects like the proposed Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline in Minnesota, because we've proved it over and over again — and recently we've had two more big wins.

Scientists released a study showing that a million species are at risk for extinction, but it was largely ignored by the corporate news media. Danny Perez Photography / Flickr / CC

By Julia Conley

Scientists at the United Nations' intergovernmental body focusing on biodiversity sounded alarms earlier this month with its report on the looming potential extinction of one million species — but few heard their calls, according to a German newspaper report.

The climate crisis is a major concern for American voters with nearly 40 percent reporting the issue will help determine how they cast their ballots in the upcoming 2020 presidential election, according to a report compiled by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

Of more than 1,000 registered voters surveyed on global warming, climate and energy policies, as well as personal and collective action, 38 percent said that a candidate's position on climate change is "very important" when it comes to determining who will win their vote. Overall, democratic candidates are under more pressure to provide green solutions as part of their campaign promises with 64 percent of Democrat voters saying they prioritize the issue compared with just 34 percent of Independents and 12 percent of Republicans.

President Donald Trump has agreed to sign a $19.1 billion disaster relief bill that will help Americans still recovering from the flooding, hurricanes and wildfires that have devastated parts of the country in the past two years. Senate Republicans said they struck a deal with the president to approve the measure, despite the fact that it did not include the funding he wanted for the U.S.-Mexican border, CNN reported.

"The U.S. Senate has just approved a 19 Billion Dollar Disaster Relief Bill, with my total approval. Great!" the president tweeted Thursday.